Committee Proposes City Map Out Sewer Problems

November 22, 1994|By Hal Dardick.

Aurora — A City Council committee has recommended creation of a map delineating the city's current sewer systems and flooding problems.

The Environment and Water Quality Committee recommended the map as a first step in drawing up a long-range plan to solve the city's sewer problems. In addition to outlining which sewer systems still carry both sanitary waste and storm water runoff, the map would highlight flooding problems caused by some of the older systems.

Committee Chairman Tess Wackerlin said the map, if approved by the full council, would be a first step in developing a long-range plan to solving sewer and flooding problems.

When Wackerlin first proposed a sewer study in September, Mayor David Pierce balked at the project, because an account of the plan in a local newspaper alarmed residents wary of a tax increase, Pierce said.

The story stated that separating all storm and sanitary sewers would cost as much as $100 million. But Wackerlin has since stressed that she is not proposing that all sewers be separated; instead, she's simply trying to identify trouble spots and map out future coordination of work in those areas.

"We couldn't afford to separate all the sewers-never," she said. "We couldn't afford that over 20 years. We just don't have the money."